The lump in her left breast, undetected by mammograms, grew so large she could see its shape through her skin. She went on disability, leaving her job as human resources director of Ventura County Superior Court to face stage 2 cancer and a future that seemed half-empty.

"I felt stripped of tomorrow," the 46-year-old Oxnard woman said in front of a fireplace still decorated with sympathy cards nine months after her diagnosis. "In the beginning, you're so overwhelmed. You feel so out of control. You feel you don't have a future."

She compiled records of the pathology of a tumor that spread to her lymph nodes. She gathered paperwork and photos detailing a path including a double mastectomy, four months of chemotherapy and 33 consecutive days of radiation.

She collated and documented until her cancer was compressed into eight file folders. It gave her what she needed most: a foothold.

"When you're first told you have cancer, you can't even say 'cancer,' " she said. "If I could anticipate it and have a plan, that gave me control."

The hair that once hung down her back is returning. Her radiation treatment is over, an occasion that triggered a family party. Benavides plans to return to work Nov. 14, maybe sooner.

Doctors tell her there's a 20 percent chance the cancer could re-emerge. But she again feels like an optimist.

"When I got diagnosed, I couldn't find the positive stories," she said of women who faced and survived cancer. "I feel like I'm a positive story."